About Ilana Landsberg-Lewis

Ilana Landsberg-Lewis worked alongside her father, Stephen Lewis, to found the Stephen Lewis Foundation and has been its Executive Director since its inception in 2003. From its humble beginnings at Ilana’s kitchen table, the Foundation has since funded more than 300 grassroots organizations in 15 countries.

Ilana is a labour and human rights lawyer and a passionate advocate for the rights of women. She spent eight years at the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in New York, where she worked as the Agency’s CEDAW Advisor, to strengthen the UN's implementation of the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

During this time, Ilana travelled the world assisting grassroots women’s groups in using and applying human rights conventions and standards in their battles against female genital mutilation (FGM), violence and all forms of discrimination. She went on to co-create a programme to bring local activist women directly into the chambers of the UN to address the Committee for CEDAW, a tactic that proved so successful that it has been integrated into the official proceedings of that body.

Ilana was also instrumental in bringing into existence and managing UNIFEM’s Trust Fund on Violence against Women, which funds grassroots women’s groups in developing countries working on everything from FGM to the relationship between gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS.

Ilana is a recipient of the YWCA Toronto 2009 Women of Distinction Award for International Development.